“When people talk about the death of books, they couldn’t be more wrong. Physical books may exist the way vinyl records do, for collectors or fanatics, but people read more today than they have at any time in history.”

It’s time for a new episode of The Virtual Memories Show!

“I think that the New York publishing industry has missed a large section of readership. For a long time, they always thought ‘those people’ didn’t read books.”

Our latest episode features a conversation with Scott Hoffman, co-founder of Folio Literary Management, about his transition from Washington, DC lobbyist to New York literary agent, the fate of the mid-list author, why zombies are hot, his agency’s e-publishing initiatives, the importance of globalization and developing markets for authors, the likelihood that the Random House / Penguin merger will go through, the diminishing relevance of publishing’s gatekeepers, the explosion of the YA market, and why he now reps much more non-fiction than novels.

“You get stabbed in the back just as often in publishing as in Washington, DC, but in publishing it’s with a cocktail toothpick.”

We also talk about the most important books in Scott’s past, and how some of his adolescent faves did or didn’t hold up.

Scott Hoffman co-founded Folio Literary Management in 2006. Scott has served as Vice-chairman of the board of SEARAC (the only nationwide advocacy agency for Southeast Asian-Americans), a board member of Fill Their Shelves, Inc., a charitable foundation that provides books to children in sub-Saharan Africa, and a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Associates Steering Committee. Before entering the world of publishing, he was one of the founding partners of Janus-Merritt Strategies, a Washington, DC strategic consulting firm. He holds an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and a BA from the College of William and Mary.

If you’d like to check out past episodes, you can find us on iTunes or visit the Podcast page for all our back episodes, as well as e-mail signup and tip jar! And why don’t you friend the Virtual Memories Show at our Facebook page? It’d make my mom happy.

Credits: This episode’s music is the end credits for 28 Days Later by John Murphy. The conversation was recorded in Mr. Hoffman’s home in New York City on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder, and I recorded the rest on a Blue Yeti mic into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band.